It was the ’90s. It was an era when there were very few international stars used to feature in a Hindi film. It was a time when Bollywood action hero persona was defined by Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty or Akshay Kumar. In those classic times, we had seen a franchise growing up based on a particular genre. It was associated with two factors – ‘Action & Akshay Kumar’.
Yes folks, we are talking about the fourth installment in the Khiladi series ‘Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi’ which was released 25 years ago, on 14th June 1996. Yes, and to celebrate the 25th anniversary, Akshay Kumar shared a funny meme via his social media handle. But before getting to that meme, you need to know a bit more about this extravagant action film which in many ways opens a frontier for more international stars to associate with more Bollywood projects.
Now, why are we talking so much about International stars? Because, apart from Akshay Kumar, Raveena Tandon and Rekha, this film featured two WWE (formerly WWF) wrestlers ‘Crush’ aka Brian Adams and Brian Lee aka the impersonator of ‘The Undertaker’. Both the wrestlers enjoyed quite a bit of fame in their time in WWF, but this film made both these two stars extremely famous in Indian fraternity. Especially, Brian Lee who played the role of The Undertaker was so convincing as the real ‘Undertaker’ Mark Calaway that most of the Indian viewers were convinced that it’s the original Undertaker who’s featured in the film ‘Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi’. Factually, Brian Lee was best known for his appearances in WWF with an impersonator version of The Undertaker.
Now, the highlight of ‘Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi’ was the ultimate fight between Akshay Kumar and ‘The Undertaker’ in the climax where after a lot of old school brawl mixed with kung-fu, Akshay Kumar’s character Akshay Malhotra emerged victorious defeating the WWF star which was an extremely massive deal for Indian audiences in that time in the ’90s. Needless to mention, that film and those action sequences eventually made Kumar an ultimate action star in Indian cinema.
Now, to talk about the meme based on ‘Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi’, Akshay shared an apparently funny image captioning, “Raise your hand if you have defeated The Undertaker!” featuring his image along with Brock Lesnar, Triple H and Roman Reigns, who has also defeated The Original “Undertaker”.
This is funny and also inspiring how an Indian action film changed the pattern of collaboration between Indian and international stars and ‘Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi’ reached a cult status over the years.
Do check out the tweet by Akshay Kumar here:
https://twitter.com/akshaykumar/status/1403982399084523528?s=19
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